“Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy
beautician.” — Lucille S. Harper

The formulation of antiaging products
presupposes an understanding of
aging itself, a subject given a thought
provoking spin in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short
story e Curious Case of Benjamin Button,
recently made into a major motion picture.
Putting the aging clock in reverse is the
ultimate goal of cosmeceuticals, but there are
many mysteries of aging yet to be unlocked.
All we know with certainty is that there are
two primary types of aging: intrinsic and
extrinsic.

Sometimes sophisticated instrumentation
is needed to test skin properties, but not in
the case of intrinsic versus extrinsic aging.
Compare skin that is, for the most part,
always covered to skin that is always exposed.
e two areas are the same chronological
age; the evident di erence is the result of
extrinsic aging.

Contrast that to intrinsic aging.
Martin Rieger wrote a comprehensive article
on the subject in 1995.1 ere are simple and
well-established rules to minimize intrinsic
aging—avoid sun and smoking, for example—

and functional products usually contain UV
protection, antioxidants and free radical
scavengers that provide a common-sense rst
line of defense.

Aging at the Cellular Level

Sophisticated cosmetics try to turn back
the clock, but what exactly is the clock and
how far back can it be turned? It is clear that
an 80-year-old woman, regardless of her
health and beauty regimen, cannot look like
a 16-year-old girl. e October 2008 issue
of Scienti c American contained an article

2

titled, “Rethinking the Wrinkling: Key
genes, rather than cell and DNA damage,
as causes of aging,” summarizing work
published in Cell, a journal of research in
molecular biology, biochemistry and cell
biology, on nematode worms—commonly
used in the genetic study of aging. e
lifetime of worms can be extended by gene
manipulation, and there are analogous
mechanisms present in humans.

e Cell paper3 referred to in Scienti c
American reports on the in uence of ELT- 3,
ELT- 5 and ELT- 6 on GATA transcription
circuits, which have been shown to be